


a prize for rotten judgement

by maggierachael



Series: love is a two way street, my dear [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hitman AU, Oberyn Martell is a Good Parent, aka the himbo went and got himself shot, aside from blood and mentions of sutures, but that man is still SOFT and i am MAD nobody ever writes him that way, ellaria is a top new york surgeon, for writing purposes i yoinked one of oberyn's daughters and made her solely ellaria's, hello yes it is i, no graphic depictions of injury, oberyn's still a prince but also a ~hired hitman~, only to fall in love with a dumbass who gets himself killed, so HELLO MODERN AU, so still sexy and dangerous but also a dumbass, the woman who's mad at pedro pascal for making her watch game of thrones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23724073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggierachael/pseuds/maggierachael
Summary: "Don’t call me darling while I’m trussing you up like a Christmas turkey.”Ellaria knew mixing with the wrong crowds was a bad idea. She was a good woman. A surgeon. She saved lives. But something about Oberyn Martell made him too intriguing to resist - even if he came with guns and knives and a list of enemies a mile long. Something about him spoke to her, so she allowed him into her life.However, when she’d told him he could drop by her apartment if he was around, she’d hadn’t exactly meant for him to show up bleeding on her doorstep.
Relationships: Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand
Series: love is a two way street, my dear [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079096
Comments: 11
Kudos: 26





	1. murder in the morning (but it's good for morale)

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever write my stories in the order they take place? Absolutely not. 
> 
> This is another concept that came out of concepts discussed with friends, so behold: modern AU pre-relationship Oberyn/Ellaria. Ellaria doesn't know how to feel. Because I am a writer who tortures her characters. 
> 
> For emotional purposes, I've fiddled with the Martell/Sand family lineup a bit, but rest assured, all eight girls are still there and Oberyn is still as much a girl dad as ever. Other than that though, I know absolutely nothing about the rest of Game of Thrones, and my feminist ass refuses to learn more, so y'all get what you get. Nonetheless, enjoy!

When she’d told him he could drop by her apartment if he was around, she’d hadn’t exactly meant for him to show up bleeding on her doorstep. 

Not that he’d ever had much pretense for thought before, but this was a new level entirely. Showing up, in the dead of night, hands clutched to his side, concealing a ghastly bullet wound that he refused to explain the origins of. Looking as white as a sheet, asking if she’d piece him back together. (Supposedly her apartment had been closer than Bellevue.) This was a new level for him, and she’d known him for all of five and a half weeks. The fact that there were  _ levels  _ at all was astonishing enough. 

But Ellaria Sand wasn’t a heartless woman, so she’d allowed Oberyn Martell - who’d somehow, someway, wormed his way into her life before she could stop him - to lean on her shoulder as she beckoned him inside, moving as quickly as she could without alerting her neighbors. 

He weighed more than he looked like he did, and her mind was a hurricane of swears and insults as she laid him out on the living room couch, something between a sacrificial offering to the gods and a Renaissance painting in need of restoration. She couldn’t possibly explain to herself  _ why  _ she was doing this, other than that generic, store-bought feeling of duty she had as a surgeon that kept her up til three most shifts. Oberyn was not her boyfriend, her partner, her husband - just a man whose hair was clinging to his forehead with sweat, staring blankly at the ceiling as she attempted to extricate him from the rather expensive suit jacket and shirt covering his marred abdomen. 

“Maybe next time,” she muttered, thinking what a terrible idea this entire endeavor was, “Don’t wear fucking Armani on a job.”

Oberyn chuckled weakly, more a wheeze than a laugh.

“As they say: dress for the job you wish for, not the job you’ve got.”

He forced a weak smile at her, and she almost scoffed. Ever the libertine, even when faced with the possibility of major scarring at best and hemorrhaging at worst. She wondered if she’d find his off button during this homemade surgical session. 

It took longer than she’d’ve liked to admit to prepare both herself and him to be stitched up. Gory details aside, the fact that she’d had to dose him with near lethal amounts of tramadol in order to fish a bullet out of his side with cosmetic tweezers was enough to give her nightmares of losing her medical license. It was every terrible, wound up, false-sounding scenario she’d ever seen and made fun of in films - except this time, she was the long-suffering side man with the knowledge and Oberyn was the poor John Wick currently clutching at one of her throw pillows. 

Her hands wanted desperately to shake as she began the real work, but she wouldn’t let them. The sooner this was over with, the sooner she could wash her hands of it. And of him. 

“If you could-- _ agh--” _

Oberyn made a rather ungainly noise as Ellaria took care of the worst of the injury, something she wasn’t quite used to from such a preening man. Something like a goose that had been stepped on, if she had to put a name to it. 

“If you could perhaps, not... _ yank  _ so much, my dove?”

He looked up at her with what she supposed was a pleading face, but had no real effect on her. She simply scowled. 

“Well, I’m not exactly doing this in the best of conditions, am I?”

It took every ounce of her ten years of medical training to not deliberately tug at his skin with the next suture. The request was enough, but to add the endearment - one that still managed to get under her skin like the edge of a scalpel - made her skin crawl. Here she was, on her couch, doing this man she hardly knew a  _ favor,  _ and he was acting as if this were a social call, something to be taken lightly. As if she wasn’t melting on the inside, a feebler part of her brain worrying about what this meant for their...well, it wasn’t a relationship, but the word was close enough. 

If she were any less of a woman, she’d’ve let him bleed out in the hallway. 

“Obara’s going to fucking kill you,” she mumbled, expression now permanently cross. “If you don’t get mugged outside my building first.”

She pulled another stitch taut, and he hissed. She could see his grip on the throw pillow turn white-knuckled, as much as he tried to hide the pain on his face. 

“If you keep encouraging her temper like it’s a stubborn houseplant,” he replied, “She most certainly will.” 

If she’d been afforded the space to do so without losing her progress, Ellaria would’ve rolled her eyes. 

“I’m not  _ encouraging _ anything, Oberyn. She hardly speaks to me.” 

It wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t exactly in the habit of making social calls to the Martell residence, and the few (and far-between) times she’d seen her... _ companion _ ’s eldest daughter, they weren’t the best of interactions. The fact that the word ‘slut’ had been used within minutes of meeting her was proof enough of that. 

“And besides,” she muttered. “Considering that her father was the bastard who gave her his own name, I think having a little bit of an attitude around the house isn’t all that far-fetched.” 

Oberyn scoffed. It sounded more like a weak cough. 

“Her talent with knives suggests more than an attitude.”

Knives. Yes. That sounded encouraging. 

“An aggressive personality, then.” Ellaria shrugged, steering the conversation away from what she had no desire to learn more about. “But I wouldn’t hold it against her.” 

“I knew you two would get along.” 

Oberyn’s hand drifted, a white, sheet-like thinking snaking its way from his side to her thigh, where it rested as gently as if a butterfly had landed on her. She wasn’t sure if he could’ve applied any more pressure, given his current situation, but the sight of him gently tracing circles against the leopard print fabric of her pajamas was enough to send her brain reeling. 

“I wouldn’t say that much.” 

Maybe she pulled the next stitch taut a little harder than she needed to. Just maybe.

“I’m her dad’s over-complicated one night stand,” she muttered. “She’s understandably a bit wary. Like they all are.” 

Oberyn’s hand stilled. He frowned. 

“You keep speaking of me as though I’m not in the room.” 

“Or under my needle.”

“Precisely.” 

Another yank. Another wince. The conversation was far beyond Obara now, and they both knew it.

“You’re worth far more than one night, my dove.”

Oberyn’s face was intense as he gazed at her, staring with eyes like burnished glass - an effect of the painkillers she’d foisted on him, no doubt. The words out of his mouth were slick, polished, almost immaculately rehearsed. Like he’d been ripped from the pages of some Jane Austen parody novel before being doused in blood and tossed down on her doorstep like forgotten take-out. Ellaria wasn’t sure how he could keep up the energy for such a charade. 

“I figured as much when you showed up here, bleeding on my welcome mat.” 

She broke his gaze in a vain attempt to ignore his insinuation, deliberately ignoring the way his grip on her thigh tightened almost imperceptibly - the kind of move that had doomed her innumerable times in the past. She had no intention of succumbing to it again. 

“Would you have preferred it if I bled out in a dark, dirty alley somewhere?”

Oberyn tilted his head in some childish imitation of curiosity, and all of Ellaria’s efforts slipped away as her heart did a standing backflip into her throat. She pegged it as a doctor’s concern for human life as she willed her hands to steady themselves. 

“Of course not.” She flicked her gaze up to him quickly, a dash of cigarette ash into its tray. “I’d  _ prefer  _ it if you were a bit more careful about not getting shot.” 

“My choice of career doesn’t exactly make that very easy, darling.” 

It didn’t seem physiologically possible that her scowl could get any deeper - but when one is talking about Ellaria Sand, little is out of the realm of possibility. 

“Don’t call me darling while I’m trussing you up like a Christmas turkey.” Her face now resembled something of a gargoyle’s, if a gargoyle could have curly black hair and a scar where a nose ring used to be. “You’re a smart man, Oberyn. Don’t tell me you can’t be careful.”

She wasn’t lying. As much as she preferred staying out of the line of fire, she’d seen how he’d acted when they met. How his eyes scanned over everything like he was constantly surveying, constantly analyzing everything around him. He was no fool, much as he might’ve seemed in the moment. Oberyn Martell was a force to be reckoned with. 

A force that Ellaria was finding it harder and harder to resist.

“Not nearly as smart as you, Ms. Sand.” 

Oberyn’s voice was quiet - one of a man speaking in respectfully hushed tones under the glory of some great cathedral’s dome. He, however, had little respect for organized religion. All of that was reserved for the woman who could perform real miracles, at least in his eyes. 

She, however, thought said respect was misplaced. 

“Clearly,” she mumbled, “Since I’m not the one who bled all over my welcome mat.” 

She sounded less curt now. Oberyn supposed it was something closer to exhaustion, the voice of frustration that bled out when someone was worried. He knew it well. He’d heard it from his own mouth many a time when his eldest arrived home in the middle of the night. Though, he supposed, Ellaria had more than a few extra reasons to be concerned. 

“I didn’t intend to scare you,” he breathed. It was the truth. “Dragging you into this was never my intention.” 

“Then you shouldn’t have flirted with me in that bar.” 

Ellaria had no regrets about letting the words slip from her lips. She was not about to be a casualty in someone else’s war. She was not about to shoulder blame for something she’d stepped into without knowing, without being able to read the warning signs. She’d worked too hard, fought too long for that. 

If Oberyn wanted to make mistakes, so be it. But they would be his mistakes. Not hers. No matter how much good she saw in him. No matter how much she wanted to keep him around. 

Oberyn flinched, this time not from the feeling of her needle in his skin, but from something else entirely. 

“Ellaria, I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would--”

“Don’t.” 

The word came out almost seething, hardening lava cracked and bleeding at the seams. It was only one word, one tiny, miniscule word, but it said all that she needed it to. Years of medical work gave her a talent in that arena. She hadn’t thought she’d ever have to use it in her own home, but alas. 

“And quit squirming,” she spat, “You’re going to bust what I’ve already--”

Oberyn’s eyeline shifted, and her sentence died a thankless death in the back of her throat. When the Red Viper decided he was done paying attention to something, it was law, and she wasn’t about to waste her breath parenting a stubborn child of a man who wasn’t going to listen. She had enough of that with her own...

_ Shit.  _

Ellaria’s body turned to face the direction Oberyn’s gaze had pivoted, about as subtly as a spin of the broken lazy Susan still sitting on her kitchen table. She had a feeling that she knew what would greet her at the hundred and eighty degree mark, but her eyes only confirmed it: 

A tiny girl, with even tinier black curls, padding her way into the living room, fluffy teddy bear in hand. 

He was never supposed to meet her. 

If Ellaria had had her way, Oberyn would never have had an inkling her daughter existed. Never had an inkling that Ellaria was capable of any kind of life-giving beyond the ones she saved on the clock. She was not a terse woman, but she knew her boundaries. Introducing a sometimes-fling-slash-hitman to her four-year-old was far enough beyond them that it was on an entirely different continent. 

She’d been with her father the night...well, the night Ellaria had gotten roped into whatever  _ this  _ was, and Ellaria had somehow managed to foist her off on babysitters, or friends - or, God forbid, her father again - whenever Oberyn called. She wanted to keep some semblance of her world separate from his destruction, from the volatile fever dream she’d stumbled her way into by way of one too many vodka tonics. The fiercely protective side of her had been determined to shield her little one, even from a man she knew to be incredibly delicate with his own children. Oberyn would never hurt a child, but Ellaria’s daughter was her world, and she refused to let that be taken from her. 

Her hands stilled over Oberyn’s side, and she unconsciously moved to shield her daughter from the bloodstained skin she was currently piecing back together. Her little girl was barely awake, still rubbing her eyes as she examined the strange man splayed out on her mama’s couch, but Ellaria wasn’t about to take any chances. 

“Hello, little bird.” 

Oberyn was not a soft man, and yet his voice was the texture of rabbit fur, gentle and soft and quiet as he addressed the little girl. His words were hardly above a whisper, and if his eyes hadn’t lit up in that way that scared her just the tiniest bit, perhaps Ellaria would’ve thought he’d finally succumbed to the high of the Ultram she’d given him. It was as if he was simply addressing another one of his daughters, tiptoeing with the same patience and care as the reality of the situation hit him. 

“Did we wake you?” 

He extended a hand forward, just enough to be beckoning - friendly even. He wasn’t quite smiling, but the ghost of the expression was there, directed at the girl in an attempt to placate any fear that might arise. The hand that had remained on Ellaria’s thigh slipped away, and she chastised herself for the heavy pang she felt in her chest as the weight lifted. Perhaps it was simply panic at the idea of her daughter conversing with a hired mercenary.

To her credit, the little girl didn’t reply, didn’t react to the hand beckoning her. Whether it was out of fear or stubbornness, Ellaria couldn’t tell, but she was proud all the same. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said as gently as she could manage, “My friend just needed some help. I’m sorry we woke you.”

Her baby remained still, unyielding to the attention of the two adults whose sole concern was to avoid scaring her. Never in her life did Ellaria think she would be thankful for Oberyn’s...extensive experience with virility, but it was ironically relevant in the moment. 

“...Are you okay?” 

Her voice was small, impossibly small in the cavern of a conversation they’ve accidentally created. She sounded frightened, lost, like one of the little girls at the beginnings of the fairy tales Ellaria read to her. She was hardly four, and already she’d known enough to throw her into an enchanted forest of her mother’s own making. 

But she was as immensely brave as any fantasy heroine she could name. She was little Gretel, Rapunzel, and Ashputtle all rolled into one, standing there in her purple  _ Frozen  _ pajamas and looking at the man sprawled out where she usually sat to watch TV. She stared up at him without wavering, despite the fact that she clutched her bear tighter to her chest with every second. She didn’t waver, didn’t run. Only stared, waiting for the answer she was due. 

Some would say she inherited that from her mother. 

Oberyn nodded once, the ghost of his smile returning to the land of the living. Of course she’d sniffed out that he was hurt - no amount of creative shielding could hide the strain in their voices and the way Ellaria’s shoulders were practically touching her ears. But he didn’t look perturbed - only reassuring. Somehow that unsettled Ellaria more. 

“I will be.” 

He extended his hand a bit farther, stretched his smile a bit wider. It was as though he was stretching canvas out over a too-big frame, some attempt at a Michaelangelo substituting blood for paint. He was performing, a Grecian mask pasted over the knots still in his muscles to placate his small audience. It would’ve been flawless, had Ellaria not seen the way he flinched when his muscles stretched too taut, when the canvas snapped in half. She wondered how often he’d done this exact thing, been in exactly this scenario with his own girls. The thought of that alone worried her more than the performance itself. 

The fleeting question of whether it worked also flashed through her mind as Elia turned on her heel, spinning like a whirling dervish back down the hall. 

Ellaria’s heart seized in her chest. Not only had this man she wasn’t sure how to feel about shown up without warning, but he’d scared her daughter. And that crossed a line. 

“Elia, wait!”

She moved to rise, to chase after her baby girl and tell her everything was going to be okay. Every muscle in her body was tense, a ripcord waiting to be released as she plummeted towards something she wanted nothing to do with. She wished she hadn’t opened that door, hadn’t answered the phone to an imploring man whose brown eyes she couldn’t resist saying yes to. Hadn’t dragged herself into some fucked up imitation of Jason and Medea just because she couldn’t say no to a pretty face and a clever mouth. 

But something in the way that pretty face froze up under her hand implored her to stay. 

His entire body stilled in an instant, running water smashing directly into a dam where it expected a waterfall. His face was akin to that of a cat faced with the prospect of a bath - the kind they made before dashing under the couch, filled with immeasurable terror. 

_ Fuck. I hope he’s not going to hemorrhage out on my couch.  _

“You told me you weren’t allergic to tramadol.” 

She reached across him stolidly, willing her nerves to still as she gripped a wrist in her hand. Oberyn frowned, the expression of fear wiped clean as soon as he knew she’d seen it. 

“I’m fine.” 

The words came out clipped - a new tone for him. She assumed she should’ve known he could be short, given his profession, but it was still unusual. Like a piano out of tune. She frowned back at him. 

“Your pulse is telling me otherwise.”

“I’m perfectly well, my dove.” Oberyn sighed, his arm tensing in her grip. “I just…”

“You just what?” Ellaria wanted to throw his hand down, wanted to prove that she could be just as short as he could, but she couldn’t. Not with his (and her) safety on the line. “You’re just lying to me? I’m a doctor, Oberyn. And you, for all intents and purposes, are my patient. You can’t play coy with me.”

She settled for setting his hand back down only slightly uncouthly and going back to her work on his side. She supposed that, at some point, she would have to mend the hole in his side like she’d mended countless numbers of Elia’s stuffed animals. (The animals made infinitely better patients.) She’d had her say, and she didn’t care if the silence that formed between them lasted a lifetime. If he wanted to play the fool with her, so be it. He’d be the one to suffer the consequences if he’d lied to her face. 

“You never said anything. About a daughter.” 

_ Oh.  _

Ellaria stumbled, all the venom in her sucked out of the snake bite she’d left. Of all the things for Oberyn to lose his immaculate calm over, of all the things to skyrocket his pulse, the existence of her daughter was not one she’d had the forethought to think of. 

“I don’t normally tend to mention her until I know I can rely on someone for more than a night,” she said solemnly. It was true; she’d seen no reason for Oberyn to be a part of her daughter’s life. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. 

Or maybe he was the exception to the rule. 

“It’s been longer than a night, love.” His voice was a whisper, softened by the simmering pain brought back by Ellaria’s needle. If she didn’t know any better, she’d’ve said it was the same softness it had possessed in front of Elia. “I thought I was being clear about not abandoning you.” 

Ellaria glanced up from her work and paused. Something in Oberyn’s expression had shifted, only slightly, barely noticeable beyond his Shakespearean way of speaking. It was small, barely noticeable, but it was something Ellaria wasn’t used to seeing on him. Something strained. Something weak. Something...sad. 

For a moment, she almost believed him. 

“Judging by the massive hole I just sewed up on your side,” she muttered as she finished off the last of the sutures, “I’m going to assume I can’t trust your word on that.”

Oberyn sighed. 

“I would never leave you alone in this world, Ellaria.” 

“Don’t.” 

“I didn’t--”

“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep, Mr. Martell.” 

She’d had enough men make those in her life. She’d be damned if she put up with any more. 

She moved to leave him, to run after her daughter, who was no doubt in tears in her bedroom, tiny body squished into the perpetually-growing pile of stuffed animals on her bed as she sobbed. She may have owed Oberyn something of a life debt, but nothing -  _ nothing _ \- mattered more to her than Elia. 

Elia, who, before her mother could fully rise, came pattering down the hall into the living room, a large, pink picture book in hand. 


	2. swallow the dice (i make my own luck now)

It took all of Ellaria’s strength not to sigh with relief in front of her daughter, but she managed it. The girl looked no less nervous than before, but it was secondary now, a base layer covered by the focused look of determination people always said made her look just like her mother. She marched forward with every ounce of strength she had until she was planted firmly in front of Oberyn, like a queen addressing her loyal subjects. It made him smirk.

“And what do we have here, little bird?”

Ellaria couldn’t help but notice the nickname, though she had half a mind more to smack him more for attempting to move while drugged up than for that.

“Mama reads to me.” Elia held up the book with both hands, brandishing it towards Oberyn like a shield. “When I feel bad.”

Oberyn nodded once again, and this time Ellaria  _ did _ smack him when he attempted to sit up. He barely noticed. 

“Ah.” He gestured weakly with one hand to the book. “And do you intend to do the same?”

Elia nodded. 

“Wonderful.” 

He broke out into that smile again, that look that could make anyone believe he was nothing more than a kind, big-hearted father with a penchant for talking to children. Nothing more than an average man, not one who dealt in an underworld too sordid for most people’s nightmares, who could take a man apart in the blink of an eye. It would’ve enamored Ellaria, had she not been in the process of attending to the wound still gaping at his side.

“Give us just one second, Ellie.”

She smiled weakly at her little girl, brought on not insignificantly by the way her eyes lit up when Oberyn encouraged her. Perhaps there should’ve been more worry over the way Elia seemed willing to throw herself in with this man that her mother had brought in on a technicality of empathy, but alas. 

It took more effort than anticipated to tie off an injured man’s sutures while simultaneously keeping it out of view of a four-year-old, but Ellaria managed without too much fuss. (“Because you’re the best surgeon this side of Dorne”, Oberyn would say later. She didn’t believe him.) Elia was practically bouncing in place waiting for her, and Ellaria couldn’t help but wonder how she’d found herself in this kind of a situation. 

Near one in the morning was not the traditional hour for reading stories, but Ellaria had a sinking feeling she’d left tradition behind the moment she’d first heard Oberyn speak. 

The book had something to do with pink unicorns and a magic princess, but Oberyn’s attention was rapt anyway, eyes glued to the book as soon as Elia began stumbling her way through reading it to him. She mostly knew the book from memory, Ellaria knew, but something swelled in her chest hearing her little girl recite her favorite story with such confidence. Was she trying to be brave, for her mother? For herself? Was she truly empathetic for this strange man that had shown up to their home out of nowhere? Or was it some combination of all three?

She couldn’t be sure, but as she crossed into the kitchen to clean her equipment, she knew she was proud of her little girl.

Her needles and first aid kit were a mess of russet and red as she ran them under the tap, a stark contrast to the blue and pink of the picture book Elia had chosen. If she’d had to put it into the words, the sight of blood in her sink, disembodied from its owner and its place, was more unsettling than the pale visage of a man showing up on her doorstep at midnight. The sight of something so grim in the world she’d cultivated for herself, the calm center of the labyrinth that was her life, made something churn in her stomach enough to make her nauseous. The idea of something so brutal finding its way so close to home scared her in a way she’d never admit to Oberyn. 

But then she heard Oberyn gasp in mock surprise at whatever her daughter had just said, followed by the vague trappings of a giggle from quiet Elia, and she sighed. It was an odd symphony of sounds, combined with the whoosh of the kitchen tap as she turned it on, like a movement added to an opera three hundreds years after the fact. Elia being happy made her happy, and to hear it come about because of a man she was still divided on...

Well, she wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it, but it certainly did send one thought spiraling through her head:

The vicious Red Viper was good with children. 

Who’d’ve thought. 

Certainly not her, she thought, her fingers now stained like she’d been mixing red Kool-Aid for Elia all day. The nausea subsided, and she was able to put away her first aid kit and make up a spare room for her unexpected guest with steady hands. Steadiest in New York, she’d been told. Surely Oberyn would agree with that, even despite the pale blanche that had colored her skin for the better part of the last few hours. Oberyn agreed with most everything she told him. 

She couldn’t be entirely sure whether that bothered her or not. 

“Okay, Ellie,” she called, “I think it’s time we let our guest get some--”

She’d intended to say ‘sleep’, the word half out of her mouth as she reappeared in the living room, but it seemed that she didn’t need to. She’d had every intention of moving as quickly as she could, expediting this already strange process, but by the time she returned, there he was: 

Oberyn Martell, prince of Dorne and symbolic lord of the seven suns, fast asleep on her couch, holding her sleeping daughter against his chest in a grip only a father could know. 

She’d known Oberyn was a father - the dogpile of girls she’d met was testament enough to that - but the image of him cradling her own flesh and blood in his arms provoked some other kind of emotion entirely. Her entire body was curled up into him, a tiny hand fisted in the fabric of his shirt and her head tucked against his chest. She looked almost perfectly at peace, and if Ellaria had had more evidence, she’d’ve thought Oberyn had been stroking her hair before he too had fallen asleep. Elia hardly  _ ever _ went down for naps so easily, and she certainly never went down that easily with her father. Had Ellaria really been gone that long? 

Her answer came when she noticed the picture book lying long abandoned in Oberyn’s lap, still open to the second to last page of the story. The hand that wasn’t cradling Elia still held it loosely in Oberyn’s grip, and it almost made her laugh.

_ So much for the princess,  _ she thought. 

Or maybe not. As far as Ellaria was concerned,  _ her _ princess seemed as content as could be.

The fact that she seemed that way while curled up with a mercenary was irrelevant. 

Elia shuffled in her sleep, face burying farther into Oberyn’s chest, and Ellaria sighed. The last thing she wanted was to rouse a man who’d already had something of a rough night, but learning about Elia’s preoccupation with unicorns was enough for one meeting. Discovering her tendency to kick in her sleep was not necessarily what his stitches needed. 

She imagined Indiana Jones felt much the same way about stealing the Ark of the Convenant as she did determining how best to extract Elia from Oberyn’s arms. How does one avoid booby traps - particularly human ones? Surgeon she might be, but normally those she worked on were unlikely to wake up. 

At least, she reassured herself, she’d walk out without her face melted to glue. 

There was no easy way to go about it. Not even the steadiest hands in New York could manage a feat like this without some scarring, but she would try. She’d touched Oberyn before (heaven knows), so she wrapped an arm around Elia, prepared to pull her loosely from the prince’s grip just softly enough to rouse him only slightly--

But not before Oberyn’s arm shot like a snake from sand, lashing out the instant he felt someone trying to disturb the sleeping girl in his arms. 

His hand closed around Ellaria’s arm before she could blink, and the pressure was a vice strong enough to both wake Elia and make her mother cry out in fright. (Perhaps the two were connected, but Ellaria’s brain was too busy worrying whether the man she’d trusted would break her arm or not.) It was a grip not soon broken, and the unforgiving look in his bloodshot eyes was something even her worst nightmare couldn’t possibly produce. 

“Oberyn!” 

She practically didn’t recognize her own voice, so filled with fear it was. Oberyn didn’t budge. 

“It’s just me!”

Ellaria had never quite understood the phrase “seconds felt like years” until that very moment, when the instant before Oberyn registered what she’d said to him lasted a lifetime and change. That instant made her sure of the doubts that had festered in her brain like black mold - he’d hurt her, certainly, just like all the others. Everything he’d said, the way he’d treated her daughter, was all a lie, and one that she’d believed. 

It took the jolt of shock that racked the mercenary’s body to convince her otherwise. 

He released her arm and let her pull Elia into her arms in quick succession, letting go of her as though she’d shocked him on contact. He opened and closed his mouth several times, eyes darting from Ellaria to her child and back again, praying that neither of them were truly hurt. 

Ellaria was fine, but souldn’t help but feel as though she’d been kicked in the ribs for an odd moment. It was an unconscious reaction - quite literally - but it unsettled the part of her that had already begun to regret allowing him into her life, much less the private sanctum where she lived. Knowing what Oberyn was was one thing, but seeing it in action?

Well, she had a feeling the strength his grip would leave a bruise.

“Ellaria, my dove, I’m--” 

The unforgiving expression vanished, replaced by something Ellaria supposed was close to the terrified grimace she was still wearing. She hushed Elia quietly as he recovered, his pupils dilating in fear, then shock, then embarrassment. He hadn’t even gone through those emotions when he’d presented her with a hole in his side.

“I would never hurt you.” He took a shaky breath. Was he..choked up? “I would never hurt you. I didn’t mean to--”

“I’m alright.” Ellaria shook her head, fighting errant curls that the incident had knocked into her face. “You’re hardly the first rowdy patient I’ve ever had.”

' Rowdy’ was certainly understating it, but Oberyn Martell was not a man who played games with others’ safety. She knew that much. And some part of her, down past the frazzled nerve endings and the fright of the present moment, believed him. She’d do the same for Elia, wouldn’t she?

Even if she wouldn’t, something tugged at her heartstrings to know that he would. 

“You two seemed quite comfy there.”

She adjusted Elia in her arms and gestured with her head to the couch - she even dared a smile, albeit a small one. The gesture didn’t do much to release the tension in Oberyn’s body, but it relieved something in her heart when his face relaxed. 

“The little bird and I were discussing whether it would be better to train a unicorn or a dragon,” he replied, “and we must’ve tired ourselves out. Your daughter makes quite the defense.”

“Unicorns are always better!” Elia interjected, her face molded into a tired grin. 

“That they are,” Ellaria replied. “Now, it is time for  _ you _ to go back to bed, young lady. You’re going to be exhausted in the--”

“ _ Wait! _ ” 

Ellaria’s little princess was no longer afraid - the dog whistle tone of her voice made that much clear. She innocently smacked at her mother’s shoulder, the universal toddler sign for “I wasn’t finished speaking”. Ellaria sighed, and acquiesced to the whims of a child who knew she had both adults in the room wrapped around her finger. 

(Between Oberyn and her, she would be shocked if she avoided going deaf by forty.)

Elia pointed to Oberyn with a tiny, chubby fist. 

“What’s your name?”

Oh. Well. 

It hadn’t occurred to Ellaria that she hadn’t properly introduced her child to the bleeding mercenary she’d unintentionally picked up at a bar. Was that appropriate? She’d never been a perfect, Lululemon-wearing PTA mother, but four year olds certainly didn’t understand emotional complexity, and...

“He’s a friend,” she decided on, before anything else could spill out. Her knowledge of Elia parroting her own words back at her made the decision to avoid the phrase “one night stand” at all costs, and she was fairly certain using “boyfriend” to describe Oberyn would cause her to break out in hives. “His name is--”

“Prince Oberyn Martell, my lady. At your service.”

Oberyn cut her off before she could finish her sentence, and she internally bit back a groan. Real or imagined, giving Elia the knowledge that she new royalty would be chattering fodder for weeks. 

Elia simply frowned. 

“You’re not a prince.” 

She stuck out her bottom lip in a disbelieving pout, and Oberyn wheezed out a laugh. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, apparently. 

“On my honor as a Dornishman, little bird, I am.” He mocked up a courteous bow as best he could while laid out like a half-animated cadaver. “Perhaps one day, you and your mother can visit my palace.” 

Ellaria snorted.

“I’d hardly call a penthouse on Central Park a palace,” she muttered. 

“Then you two will simply have to visit Dorne someday.”

Now Elia was  _ really  _ never going to stop talking. 

“Now, say goodnight to Oberyn.” Ellaria brushed her daughter’s hair behind her ear and sighed. “Princes need their rest too.” 

Elia’s face contorted into the masterful pout she’d honed over the course of her four short years on Earth - the universal toddler’s sign for “please, mom, just five more minutes?” Ellaria might’ve succumbed to it, if not for the late hour. 

“We can all have breakfast together tomorrow,” she promised. It was bait, but they’d all been through enough over the course of the night. She was tired enough to be desperate. “I’ll make those chocolate pancakes you like.”

The pout softened. Not enough for Elia to give in - lord, she was stubborn like her mother - but enough to show she was intrigued. 

“Really?” 

“Yes, really.” Ellaria smiled softly. “And we can teach Oberyn about the joys of Nutella on breakfast food.” 

“Sounds intriguing.” 

The corner of Oberyn’s mouth quirked into a smirk. 

“I look forward to it,” he said. “Goodnight, little bird.”

“Goodnight, Prince Martell!”

Ellaria could feel her little girl waving vigorously as she began walking them away down the hall, and she sighed. She had a feeling that name was going to stick. 

Only upon fielding several questions about when they could see Oberyn’s castle was Ellaria able to put her daughter back to bed, and she had half a mind to let her sleep in later than usual as she checked the clock. Elia was squirming around in her bed, hardly in place to sleep now she’d been introduced to a prince who’d practically popped out of her storybooks, but the clocked blinked out its bright green readout all the same: 2:14AM. 

2:14AM, and she was about to put a prince to bed in her spare room. Next she’d be running into Hugh Grant in a bookshop.

Romantic lead he was not, but Oberyn looked finally at peace when she paced back into the living room. He’d propped himself up on a handful of throw pillows, and the soft glow from the kitchen light transformed him back into the prince of a sun kingdom that he was. A small, fleeting part of her wished that he wasn’t still so pale, but in the world he’d chosen for himself, she knew that not even princes got everything they wished for. 

“I made up the spare room for you,” she said. This time, she sat at the opposite end of the couch from him as she looked him over. “I’m not letting you back out in public looking like that. There’s old pajamas on the bed, and extra blankets in the closet if you need them. It’s not the Plaza, and the comforter’s a bit shit, but I hope it’ll do.”

Oberyn smiled. 

“I’m certain it’s wonderful,” he mumbled. “As all things are with you.”

There was the charm again - it never seemed to cease, and sometimes she wondered if it was just as much a defense mechanism as the vice grip he’d had on her arm. She wondered if there was another Oberyn that existed beyond all of it, beyond the suave exterior and the will not to stop until he got what he wanted. 

“But I’d rather not be alone with my thoughts tonight, Ms. Sand. Would you mind so terribly if I slept with you?”

She supposed not. 

“Oberyn, your stitches are barely an hour old,” she sighed, “you’ll--”

“No, no.”

He cut off her exasperation before it could take root, reaching the little distance he could manage to take her hand in his. It was gentle, infinitely more so than his touch had been only minutes ago. Gentle enough that Ellaria was tempted to believe him. 

“To sleep,” he said. “Nothing more. You have my word.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him.

“And your honor as a Dornishman?”

“Of course, my dove.” He smirked. “Always.”

She glanced from his face to their hands and back again. He traced his thumb across her palm, and the part of her she’d tried to tamp down all night was suddenly too exhausting to keep quiet. 

One night couldn’t possibly hurt, right?

“I suppose I should keep an eye on you.” She might live to regret this, but what was one more item on the list? “But any funny business and I’ll reopen those stitches myself.” 

Her eyebrow remained quirked as she stood to help him up, their hands bonded like chainmail as he put his weary limbs to use. They were shaky, and a not-insignificant portion of his weight was on her, but it worked. For a man who’d ding-dong ditched the Grim Reaper not even eight hours ago, it was a victory Ellaria would take. 

“I have no intention of facing your wrath a second time tonight, love.” 

He squeezed her hand before letting it go, and she nodded. 

“Damn right you don’t.”

She shouldered his weight off of her, to see if he could manage the few steps to the washroom and then to bed. It felt like training Elia to walk all over again, though Oberyn seemed even less sure on his own feet. 

He swayed like a buoy in an ocean too deep for Ellaria to understand, but he could hold his own for now. Ellaria saw it best to follow closely behind him as she pointed towards the hall, the odd, narrow piece of real estate that marred the shape of her apartment into a dumbbell. Mercenary or not, the trained part of her wasn’t sure she could trust him not to bust another part of himself in the twelve feet that separated them from her bed. 

To his credit, the only thing that stopped from succeeding was the nursery door cracked enough that he could see Elia fast asleep. 

He paused in that small, bright section of the hallway, the bright pink door habitually cracked so Ellaria could check on her baby without waking her. It seemed almost involuntary, the response of a father so used to such an action that it required no thought at all. If any other man had stopped to look at her daughter like that, she’d’ve taken a bat to their kneecaps. But not Oberyn. She could see the face of a sympathetic man in him as he leaned on the doorframe, a face completely enraptured as he watched little Elia roll over in her sleep. 

She’d never seen him look so vulnerable. 

“She reminds me so much of my girls.”

Ellaria could see a smile on his face, the eerie outline of the sad, tight-lipped expression outlined by the glow from Elia’s nightlight. He looked older, and she could see now that she was right. There was another Oberyn underneath everything, underneath the role he played for Ellaria and his daughters and everyone else. It was a pensive one, one who’d been through more than she could imagine. One who couldn’t let any of it go. 

Against her better judgement, she came to stand behind him and rested a hand against his shoulder. 

“She certainly trusts you like they do.” 

She couldn’t be certain whether she meant that as a positive or a negative. The lines always seemed so blurry around Oberyn. 

She couldn’t be certain whether that scared her or not either. 

“My sister’s name was Elia.” 

The words are quiet. Nearly unintelligible. Not the quiet of someone trying not to wake a child, but that of someone unsure whether they trusted themselves to speak. 

“Mmm?”

Ellaria ran her thumb along the seam of Oberyn’s shirt. He sighed. 

“My sister,” he repeated, just as softly as before. “My sister was named Elia. Like your girl.”

“Was?”

“She was taken from us. A long time ago.” 

Ellaria could feel Oberyn’s weight lean into her touch, and something deep in the pit of her stomach dropped. 

“The name.” The words came slowly out of his mouth, like he was speaking through a mouthful of molasses and tar. “I...was not expecting to ever hear it again.”

“I’m so sorry, Oberyn.” 

She glanced over at the sleeping Elia - her Elia. The little girl she’d sworn to protect the moment she first saw her face. The one she’d thrown herself into traffic and take a bullet for. Her Elia meant more than the sum of the universe to her, and she was hardly four. To feel the way Oberyn did would break her clean in two. 

“I didn’t even intend for you to meet her. If I’d known that that was the case, I would’ve--”

“No.” 

Oberyn drifted towards her, the sharp word finally tearing his attention away from the tiny girl who reminded him so much of his Sarella. It was an aimless drift, one only stopping when Ellaria’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality. 

“It is a beautiful name,” he mumbled. There was a sadness in his voice Ellaria was too meek to point out. “If anyone deserves it, it is her.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her forehead, soft and dry and shaky as he struggled to keep his balance amongst a haze of painkillers. So shaky, in fact, that she barely noticed the arms that encircled hers, that held her in a grip that revealed more about Oberyn Martell’s personality than any charming quip or impressive gunfight ever could. It was the grip of a man who was worn, frayed at the edges - a flag flown one too many times for its country. A man who knew what he loved, and held fast to it. A man who’d let something important slip away, and wasn’t about to repeat that mistake. A man who might, perhaps, be the tiniest bit lost. 

“You chose well, my dove.” 

He didn’t say anything for the rest of the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write this entirely because of my disappointment in the lack of canon ship fics for Oberyn? Yes. Is it the most ridiculous thing I've ever written? Also yes. I'm not sure what y'all expect out of me at this point.


End file.
